Reflections

The state Regional Water Quality Control Board was investigating the spills of untreated sewage into the South Fork Eel River near Redway and scheduled a hearing for later in the month to determine if the Redway Community services District violated state discharge requirements in the leakages.

Members of the state water quality board's staff had visited the Redway services district's lift station three times since the series of spills had begun in early July of that year.

Some 189,000 gallons of untreated human waste entered the river just north of Redway in the four spills within nine days and resulted in the county health department declaring the river below the spill unsafe for recreational use. Within two weeks, the health department had decreed the river north of Redway again safe for recreational use.

Redway's services district had blamed the spills on various mechanical malfunctions and failures at their lift station, including a faulty alarm system.

A water quality staff member said that if negligence was found to be involved in a sewage discharge, the water quality control board was likely to require that specific things be performed by the district. However, he noted that "everything seemed to be back in working order" at the latest inspection of the Redway district's lift station.

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Everywhere you went in Garberville, along the Avenue of the Giants, Fortuna, Eureka and points north and south were big signs, "Burl Shop," "Slab Country," "Slabs for Sale."

What were slabs and where did they come from and what did you do with them? Slabs were big business up here the woods county, and there was a lot of money to be made — and a lot of beautiful, useful items that could be made from wood that had until then been pushed into a heap and burned as useless. That day of wasteful burning was past as people, tired of the plastic world, turned to the more solid realities of theings made from nature. But behind all those beautiful items was a lot of work.

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A class action suit brought against an auto insurance company resulted in an expensive life-saving tool being awarded to a Southern Humboldt rescue squad. The suit against the auto insurance company resulted in seven of the $7,000 units, called the Jaws of Life, to be purchased by the company. They were then given to the State of California, Office of Emergency Services - Fire Rescue Division for assignment to field locations in selected rural communities in Northern California and Nevada.

John Barbour, CDF district ranger nominated Garberville Fire Protection District as a candidate for one of the tools. William Harrington, CDF ranger in charge for Humboldt County and also O.E.S. Fire and Rescue Coordination for Humboldt County also recommended Garberville and passed the application on to Sacramento where it was successfully acted upon.

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Families were invited to celebrate Family Day at Tooby Park in Garberville because there had risen in the previous few years a chorus of doubt as to the continued health of the family unit. Some had even termed it obsolete. The pressures of the day, economic, philosophical and emotional had battered the family's solidarity.Yet the family remained the only game in town so far as national strength and purpose were concerned. The Family Day was an effort to dramatize the family, to reaffirm its major role in society.